If I Wanted to Plunge America Into Darkness and Despair

Tom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

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Darkness and despair have descended upon America and one needs to understand it has not been sudden. It’s been happening for 75 years or more and it’s peaking.

Paul Harvey used to do “If” stories that were very effective in tying together a lot of thoughts. I wish there was someone still doing what he did so well. We need folks who can do that sort of thing using the common language, as so much of what is out there opinion-wise is either too dense or too focused for the common thread to be grasped. I’m no Paul Harvey, for sure, but some thoughts keep running through my head as to what’s happening today that demand his approach. That is to say I believe there has been, for about the last 75 years or so, a deliberate effort to plunge America into darkness and despair such that she might be toppled as the free world’s king of the hill.

If I wanted to plunge America into darkness and despair I would start by slowly corrupting  post-World War II institutions that had helped deliver victory. I would put people in charge who thought the state bureaucracy was there not to serve but to control and be served. I would make politicians gradually irrelevant, forcing them to behave with a combination of grift and investigations. I would have them adopt a technique of speaking in language that conveyed as little as possible and in terms so vague no could possibly know what was really happening, singing America’s praises at every step.

I would then expand the reach and power of the state bureaucracy by taxing and spending as if the money originated with those giving it away. I would create new agencies with noble sounding purposes such as the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Education who could employ the carrot and stick approach to the individual states and the public at large. I would limit elected officials’ choices to selecting a few people at the top and protect the bureaucrats below with both civil service protection and public employee unions to ensure the bureaucrats had their way.

If I wanted to plunge America into darkness and despair I would then emphasize America’s problems over its opportunities. I would begin by talking about the threats to man’s existence from pollution and gradually shift to saying the Earth was endangered by man’s activities; that the billions of years old Earth was a fragile thing that could be destroyed by man. I would talk about saving the planet as if it were a deity and treat the American citizen as the “ugly American” who, if not controlled, would kill every little thing.

I would also gradually reintroduce the long discredited idea that what is now is all there is or ever will be; that resources are limited, that man consumes too many of them and is destined to famine from running out. I would pay no attention to man’s unique imaginative and creative abilities as an instrument of God and insist that population growth is a huge threat, ignoring the fact man himself is the ultimate resource. I would have others write books of doomsday predictions that never get challenged or rated because they’re always in the future and only intended to sway political opinion today.

If I wanted to plunge America into darkness and despair I would make government itself, rather than man, the hero. I would laud it as the preferred solution to every problem and I would let it take trillions of dollars from ordinary people to dispense in grants and loans for projects such as offshore wind that make no sense and for which the only true beneficiaries are those with government jobs, attorneys, consultants and other grifters. I would let the rich grow richer by rewarding them with government largesse and allowing them to hide their political influence using tax-exempt entities masquerading as charities.

I would have these tax-exempt entities finance opposition to coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy so that demand for impossible alternatives would instead be fueled. I would pay for idiots to glue themselves to highways, to chain themselves to trees and make themselves squeaky wheels that no longer can be ignored, making way for the grift. I would mandate conversion to electric vehicles no one wants, that cost tens of thousands more than conventional vehicles in subsidies and that are incapable of being supported by the grid, effectively forcing everyone out of personal vehicles.

If I wanted to plunge America into darkness and despair I would also demand people start living in cities with mass transit, in tiny high-rent apartments owned by some big bank or some other massive corporatist entity. I would effectively end the right to travel unless you’re among the super-rich. I would then insist that all energy come from expensive, unreliable and non-dispatchable solar and wind facilities located either: (1) on the land I just ensured got abandoned to my whims by forcing people into cities, or (2) in the ocean I previously insisted was threatened by man.

I would then patiently wait for storms and other disasters from which there is no escape because the grid has been destroyed, there is no electricity, there are no power plants to provide it, mass transit isn’t working and there are no cars or even a right to travel. I would tell those trapped the very same thing the authorities on Maui told those folks; that the roads are closed and they cannot leave. I would pretend that everything is normal, insist there is no crisis and destroy free speech so that no other thought could intrude. Time permitting, I would also create a pandemic by releasing a virus I had created in my enemy’s laboratory at my expense and then institute lockdowns and vaccine mandates to prove to myself I could do it all and get away with it. Finally, I would create a damp sock puppet Presidency to make sure all goes according to plan.

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